I just ask you to wait and test me. No one knows of this--that
I'd swear--and no one shall; but what's the matter with her, Durward,
what's she afraid of? That's why I spoke to you. You know her, and I'll
throttle you here where we stand if you don't tell me just what the
trouble is. I don't care for confidences or anything of the sort. You
must break them all and tell me--"

His hand was on my arm again, his big ugly face, now grim and obstinate,
close against mine.

"I'll tell you," I said slowly, "all I know, which is almost nothing.
The trouble is Semyonov, the doctor. Why or how I can't say, although
I've seen enough of him in the past to know the trouble he _can_ be.
She's afraid of him, and Markovitch is afraid of him. He likes playing
on people's nerves. He's a bitter, disappointed man, who loved
desperately once, as only real sensualists can... and now he's in love
with a ghost. That's why real life maddens him."

"Semyonov!" Lawrence whispered the name.

We had come to the end of the quay. My dear church with its round grey
wall stood glistening in the moonlight, the shadows from the snow
rippling up its sides, as though it lay under water. We stood and looked
across the river.

"I've always hated that fellow," Lawrence said. "I've only seen him
about twice, but I believe I hated him before I saw him.... All right,
Durward, that's what I wanted to know. Thank you. Good-night."

And before I could speak he had gripped my hand, had turned back, and
was walking swiftly away, across the golden-lighted quay.

XIX

From the moment that Lawrence left me, vanishing into the heart of the
snow and ice, I was obsessed by a conviction of approaching danger and
peril. It has been one of the most disastrous weaknesses of my life that
I have always shrunk from precipitate action. Before the war it had
seemed to many of us that life could be jockeyed into decisions by words
and theories and speculations. The swift, and, as it were, revengeful
precipitancy of the last three years had driven me into a self-distrust
and cowardice which had grown and grown until life had seemed veiled and
distant and mysteriously obscure. From my own obscurity, against my
will, against my courage, against my own knowledge of myself,
circumstances were demanding that I should advance and act. It was of no
avail to myself that I should act unwisely, that I should perhaps only
precipitate a crisis that I could not help. I was forced to